SunPort

A smart plug device helping users using solar energy even without solor panels.

ThermO Cover Image

Type
UX Consulting for a company about their APP named SunPort

Time
2018.1-2018.4

Teammates
Alexandra Carey / Denver Nash / katherine Pittman / Yurou Song


Role
UX Researcher / Graphic Designer / Consultant

What I Did
1. Being a UX Researchers using the folowing skills.
2. Took charge of graphic designs.
3. Came up with and wrote the "advice" section in our reports.


Skills Interview / Competitor Analysis / Servey / Heuristic Analysis / Usability Test

Tools
Illustrator / qualtrics / Excel

PROBLEM & GOAL ( SunPort wants to engage users better )

SunPort makes use of solar renewable energy credits to offset users' energe consumption. However, this concept conflicts with the users' mental models of solar products, and thus SunPort suffers.

In order to engage and attract users better, SunPort decided to implement a cryptocurrency token. Since this would be an entirely new direction, SunPort needed to gain insights into:

  • How users would respond to this direction?

  • How to keep users engaged with SunPort?

INTERACTION MAP ( How SumPort App currently works? )

Interaction Map

PROCESS

In order to comprehensively understand either how people would react to the new direction or what other things SunPort can do to improve, we have utilized many research methods and provide advices to SunPort accordingly .

Process of Reasearch

FINDING & ADVICE


Finding 1: SunPort's target users are community-minded.


Advice 1: Support online community and visualize the group impact.

Finding 1
Advice 1


Finding 2: Users show interest but hesitancy toward cryptocurrency.


Advice 2: Emphasize its low risk, low investment and meaningful value.

Finding 2
Advice 2


Finding 3: The interactions are sometimes inconsistent.


Advice 3: Keep interactions consistent in order to meet user expectations.

Finding 3
Advice 3


Finding 4: Its feedbacks are sometimes not clear, and the help is limited.


Advice 4: Improve UX writing and provide help documentations.

Finding 4
Advice 4

TAKEAWAY

  1. Good ideas/concepts can be tricky. We were so excited after the first stakeholder meeting knowing that SunPort would like to have research on cryptocurrency. During the research, however, we found more concerns than excitements out there.

  2. Usability problem may not be obvious without testing. At the first glimpse, SunPort seems really nice in terms of UI design and the concept it supports. But since it was a pretty new product and had not received many feedbacks or testings, some usability issues had not been located.

  3. Teamwork matters! We as a research team, had diverse backgrounds and personalities. It took a little time for each of us to adjust to the team properly, but it worked out pretty well. We divided our tasks based on our strength, skills and interests every time. I focused on graphic design and wrighting the advice part in our reports.